By Bob Spiwak It is not unusual for people from all walks of life, and rides of life as well, to ask me if I am doing a car count on Highway 20 during busy traffic weekends in the valley. The query seems to be coming up more often as the years go by. The...

By Bob Spiwak It has been a slow week here in the upper reaches of the valley. Much of the activity has been at the Rhythm & Blues Festival, or related to it because of the traffic that constantly came by en route to the concert. It began Wednesday afternoon and peaked probably late Thursday...

By Bob Spiwak Aug. 1, 2014 promised to be a busy day. The fires had been pretty much quelled, and the rains had not yet come to create their own devastation. I was on my way to the new Gamble Sands golf course near Brewster for a golf media event, a prelude to the course’s...

By Bob Spiwak For the first time in several weeks, the morning (July 6) was actually cool. After several nights in a screened backpack tent, I slept in the house yesterday and, without any covers, was awakened by the cold. This morning’s chill may be the result of the smoke from any or all of...

By Bob Spiwak Monday morning was a special one: It was raining, and raining hard. This on the heels of an in-the-shade thermometer reading of 103 at one point Sunday afternoon. Sleeping was not too difficult with the fans going and the outside temperature down to a cooling 75 or so. This follows a fine...

By Bob Spiwak It’s a balmy, sunny Monday morning, a gentle breeze whispering through the pines, possibly bringing some rain showers later in the day. “After 2 p.m.,” reads the forecast. This is a departure from the usual forecasts from NOAA that have seemed to concentrate on the hours of 11 a.m. or 11 p.m....

By Bob Spiwak Sunday afternoon. There are puffy white clouds above and a warm breeze blowing. Nothing like the furnace we had the past week. We peaked at 100 degrees in the shade one day, and heard of higher temperature readings from elsewhere. The fruit fly invasion seems to have modified, at least here in...

By Bob Spiwak The buzz this morning is a predicted temperature of 102 degrees as a high for Mazama. Yesterday (Sunday), we were in the high 80s in West Boesel and for a change there was no wind, barely a breeze. The river has been up and down. My visual barometer is a snag on...

By Bob Spiwak It’s Monday morning and first thing I need to do is to offer a correction to last week’s report that the average length of the logs piled up for the salmon recovery project was 10 feet. Bad mistake. I had a temporary affliction of flatus cerebelus, something that comes with age. The...

By Bob Spiwak One of the perks of being a golf writer is travel, especially when it is on someone else’s dime. In that case, there is usually a quid pro quo (something for something) involved, so it is expected that nice things will be written about whoever is picking up the tab. In this...